Dave Dat Nguyen, founder and CEO of Thoi Bao Inc., Webnews Printing Inc., Lancotek Products Inc. Dat came to Canada in 1975 after his family fled South Vietnam near the end of the war. His family settled in Halifax and in 1980 he earned his bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from the Technical University of Nova Scotia now Dalhousie University.
Dat worked for 18 years as a research material engineer for various companies in Ontario. In 2003 he founded Lancotek Products Inc., a successful manufacturer of fire retardant coatings and products. He has published more than 10 technical papers and co-authored three US patents on fire retardant materials.
In the Vietnamese community, Dat is known as the publisher of Thoi Bao newspaper, which he started printing from his basement in Toronto. In 1998 Dat started another initiative, Webnews Printing Inc., which is currently printing more than 100 community and ethnic newspapers throughout Canada and the United States.